Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

No fictional character is more renowned for his powers of thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes. But is his extraordinary intellect merely a gift of fiction, or can we learn to cultivate these abilities ourselves, to improve our lives at work and at home? We can, says psychologist and journalist Maria Konnikova, and in Mastermind she shows us how. Beginning with the "brain attic", Konnikova unpacks the mental strategies that lead to clearer thinking and deeper insights.

Pre-Suasion: Channeling Attention for Change

The author of the legendary best seller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini, shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn't lie in the message itself but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Ego Is the Enemy

"While the history books are filled with tales of obsessive visionary geniuses who remade the world in their images with sheer, almost irrational force, I've found that history is also made by individuals who fought their egos at every turn, who eschewed the spotlight, and who put their higher goals above their desire for recognition." (From the prologue)

We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation

In these provocative, powerful essays acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang (Can't Stop Won't Stop, Who We Be) takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country. Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing, and distinguished cultural criticism, We Gon' Be Alright links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington, DC, and more.

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a hostage negotiator brought him face-to-face with a range of criminals, including bank robbers and terrorists. Reaching the pinnacle of his profession, he became the FBI's lead international kidnapping negotiator. Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss' head.

Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent

After meeting chef Alice Waters at her legendary restaurant, Chez Panisse, Sydney Finkelstein got to thinking about the dozens of chefs who had come from her establishment to open their own restaurants and gain notoriety as some of the country's most creative culinary figures. Waters, he found, had spawned a family tree of geniuses. Could this pattern exist in other industries?

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives - from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture - can be understood as the result of a few long-term accelerating forces.

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation's most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals, he again addresses the challenge of improving the world but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

In this must-listen book for anyone striving to succeed, pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows parents, educators, students, and businesspeople - both seasoned and new - that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a focused persistence called "grit". Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, MacArthur "genius" Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success.

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

Have you ever wanted to learn a language or pick up an instrument, only to become too daunted by the task at hand? Expert performance guru Anders Ericsson has made a career of studying chess champions, violin virtuosos, star athletes, and memory mavens. Peak condenses three decades of original research to introduce an incredibly powerful approach to learning that is fundamentally different from the way people traditionally think about acquiring a skill.

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media, commercials and other efforts to harvest our attention. Over the last century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the "attention merchants", contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of recent inventions, but the end result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six human species inhabited the Earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism?

Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations

Every day we work hard to motivate ourselves, the people we live with, the people who work for and do business with us. In this way much of what we do can be defined as being motivators. From the boardroom to the living room, our role as motivators is complex, and the more we try to motivate partners and children, friends and coworkers, the clearer it becomes that the story of motivation is far more intricate and fascinating than we've assumed.

Idrees Haddad says:"Great insights into what motivates and demotivates"

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades.

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

The companies that Google Ventures invest in face big questions every day: Where's the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your ideas look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution to a problem? Business owners and investors want their companies and the people who lead them to be equipped to answer these questions - and quickly.

The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

In The Happiness Track, Emma Seppala, the science director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, explains that our inability to achieve sustainable fulfillment is tied to common but outdated notions about success. We are taught that getting ahead means doing everything that's thrown at us (and then some) with razor-sharp focus and iron discipline; that success depends on our drive and talents.

The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over

The Like Switch is packed with all the tools you need for turning strangers into friends, whether you are on a sales call, a first date, or a job interview. As a Special Agent for the FBI's National Security Division's Behavioral Analysis Program, Dr. Jack Schafer developed dynamic and breakthrough strategies for profiling terrorists and detecting deception. Now, Dr. Schafer has evolved his proven-on-the-battlefield tactics for the day-to-day, but no less critical battle of getting people to like you.

The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself

Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

Drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics - as well as the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters - this painstakingly researched book explains that the most productive people, companies, and organizations don't merely act differently. They view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways.

The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

We are stuck, stymied, frustrated. But it needn't be this way. There is a formula for success that's been followed by the icons of history - from John D. Rockefeller to Amelia Earhart to Ulysses S. Grant to Steve Jobs - a formula that let them turn obstacles into opportunities. Faced with impossible situations, they found the astounding triumphs we all seek.

Warren Buffett's Ground Rules: Words of Wisdom from the Partnership Letters of the World's Greatest Investor

Compiled for the first time, and with Buffett's permission, these letters spotlight his contrarian diversification strategy, his almost religious celebration of compounding interest, his preference for conservative rather than conventional decision making, and his goal and tactics for bettering market results by at least 10 percent annually. Demonstrating Buffett's intellectual rigor, they provide a framework to the craft of investing that had not existed before.

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin - a "microbe's-eye view" of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on Earth.

We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly the decisions that affect our lives - where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health insurance - are being made not by humans but by mathematical models. In theory this should lead to greater fairness. But as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. Tracing the arc of a person's life, O'Neil exposes the black-box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society.

Publisher's Summary

From the New York Times best-selling author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, a compelling investigation into the minds, motives, and methods of con artists - and the people who fall for their cons over and over again.

While cheats and swindlers may be a dime a dozen, true conmen - the Bernie Madoffs, the Jim Bakkers, the Lance Armstrongs - are elegant, outsized personalities, artists of persuasion, and exploiters of trust. How do they do it? Why are they successful? And what keeps us falling for it over and over again? These are the questions that journalist and psychologist Maria Konnikova tackles in her mesmerizing new book.

From multimillion-dollar Ponzi schemes to small-time frauds, Konnikova pulls together a selection of fascinating stories to demonstrate what all cons share in common, drawing on scientific, dramatic, and psychological perspectives. Insightful and gripping, the book brings listeners into the world of the con, examining the relationship between artist and victim. The Confidence Game not only asks why we believe con artists but also examines the very act of believing and how our sense of truth can be manipulated by those around us.

What the Critics Say

"It's a startling and disconcerting read that should make you think twice every time a friend of a friend offers you the opportunity of a lifetime.... If you liked Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, you'll love this lucid and revelatory look into our oh-so-susceptible selves." (Erik Larson, number-one New York Times best-selling author of Dead Wake and best-selling author of Devil in the White City)

I'm so happy Audible offers a "great listen every time guarantee" and that I can get my book credit refunded for The Confidence Game. What a disappointment! I was expecting something useful and an at least some original ideas. Instead I got a rehash of Cialdini's work, and a bunch of vignettes about people falling for cons. They weren't at all helpful because she picked the most extreme examples that had no relevance to me (eg that idiot Professor that got fired from CH for drug smuggling for his internet 'girlfriend', people getting sucked into cults, and desperate people getting tricked by fortune tellers into giving them either the equity in their homes or their life savings). It was a book that seemed to enjoy pointing out the obvious. I'm surprised I kept going with it as long as I did (probably almost 3/4) because I kept expecting her to actually get to something useful. Sadly that never happened. This book is similar to about 15 dozen others that say roughly the same thing - and they do a better job with less crazy examples. Not worth money or time.

all the listeners who are not new to Audible know what a difference a good narration makes. The author of this book decided to read the book herself the narration is horrible. I barely got through about 30 minutes of not being able to focus on the story and decided to return it.

For those of you who decide to power through the narration, good luck!

Where does The Confidence Game rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The Confidence Game ranks fairly high

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Confidence Game?

When one of the "impostors" performed successful surgery using just a textbook

Which character – as performed by Maria Konnikova – was your favorite?

Frank DeMara (hope I'm spelling this right)

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Not necessarily - it covered a lot of territory

Any additional comments?

I generally don't like author-narrators but Ms. Konnikova's (Dr. Konnikova's?) voice was perfect for this. I liked the general tone of the book - not making victims out to be idiots, but just human. As an almost-victim of a "con" I appreciated it!

I enjoyed this book. The author presents vital information. I bought a hard copy for my elderly mother, who has had a few encounters with people trying to take advantage of her.

That said, the author occasionally lisps. I think someone told her not to enunciate 's' sounds too much into the microphone to avoid a hissing sound and she's overdoing it. Not a major problem, just slightly distracting.

Would you try another book from Maria Konnikova and/or Maria Konnikova?

Yes. I'm a big fan of her weekly segment on Mike Pesca's show The Gist. Even though this book didn't hold my interest, I'll give her another shot.

Would you be willing to try another book from Maria Konnikova? Why or why not?

Yes. I'm a big fan of her weekly segment on Mike Pesca's show The Gist. Even though this book didn't hold my interest, I'll give her another shot.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Maria Konnikova?

Not likely. I didn't think her delivery was bad, and don't agree with those who gave very unfavorable reviews of her performance, but there are certainly better readers out there. She would be well served to let somebody else narrate her next book.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No way to make a movie out of this book.

Any additional comments?

I really like Maria Konnikova on the Gist and thought I'd give her book a shot. It could have been improved by cutting out about 1/3 of the material. About 7.5 hours in I was wondering how much longer it could be. About 10 hours in, Ms. Konnikova covers the Sunken Cost Fallacy and at that point I thanked her for giving me an excuse to delete the book before it was finished. Sorry. I really wanted to like it but it was just too long...too many examples were provided that didn't seem fully relevant to the information about the Confidence Game being presented.